


Sloths Grow algae on their Fur as Camouflage

by stormcloud_cos



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxious Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Chaotic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Fluff, M/M, Soulmates, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Deceit | Janus Sanders, demus - Freeform, dukeceit, i forgot to add Patton, prinxiety if you squint - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:41:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26990806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormcloud_cos/pseuds/stormcloud_cos
Summary: Remus King opened his eyes and uncovered his right wrist at 5:56 PM on June 19th, his 16th birthday. ‘Hey’, spelled out the messy cursive writing that cloned his soulmate’s handwriting and showed their first words to him. Remus felt disappointed; anyone could say ‘hey’ to him! How would he ever find his soulmate?
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders
Comments: 3
Kudos: 136





	Sloths Grow algae on their Fur as Camouflage

**_Remus-_ **

Remus King opened his eyes and uncovered his right wrist at 5:56 PM on June 19th, his 16th birthday. ‘Hey’, spelled out the messy cursive writing that cloned his soulmate’s handwriting and showed their first words to him. Remus felt disappointed; anyone could say ‘hey’ to him! How would he ever find his soulmate?

Roman looked over his shoulder at the words, then sighed and said, “Oof. Good luck finding your soulmate.” Remus only groaned and shoved his older brother off of him. Roman had an easier one: ‘Agh, shit, I spilled my coffee all over you’. All he had to do was bump into someone with coffee.

**_Janus-_ **

Janus Dolian, on February 3rd, had almost forgotten it was his 16th birthday. That was, until he felt a feather-like sensation on his right wrist like words being etched into his skin. He jumped at the realization that that was precisely what it was; his Soulmark. The first words that his soulmate would speak to him. He covered his wrist, not wanting to see it until it was done, and when he looked, he was probably the most confused he’d ever been in his life. ‘Sloths grow algae on their fur as camouflage’ in  _ very _ messy neon green handwriting.  _ Huh? _ Oh well, at least he’d know who his soulmate was when he found them. 

**_Remus-_ **

“Janus C. Dolian?” Mr. Berry was reading attendance on the first day of 12th grade. 

“I actually go by Jay,” said a quiet voice from the back row, and Remus turned his head back to see the  cute person it came from shrink back into his seat. He had a mark over his left eye- birthmark, burn, or something else? Remus didn’t really know.

Mr. Berry cleared his throat. “Okay, I will be sure to change that later. Remus Duke?”

“Here and present, Mister!” exclaimed Remus, spinning back around and shooting his hand up into the air. Mr. Berry gave him an annoyed look, and before Remus could say more, Mr. Berry called the next person’s name.

At lunch that day, Remus looked for his brother Roman. Roman was older than him by just over a year, but had to repeat 10th grade because of his inability to focus in class, so they were both in 12th grade. He finally found Roman: sitting with a purple-haired boy at a table in the corner.  _ Weird, he never sits in the corner _ . Roman always sat in the middle of wherever there were people.

He walked over to his older brother. “Hey, Ro!”

“Oh, hey!” Roman responded. “Guess what? I found my soulmate!”

Remus was genuinely surprised. “Really? That’s great-” he looked down at his brother’s shirt, “Oof.” The guy with purple hair ducked his head and muttered a sorry, and Roman assured him that it was fine. Remus decided that it was time to leave his brother, and went to go bug his other friend Logan.

“Lo-Lo! Guess what-- Roman found his soulmate!” Logan was Remus’s closest friend, and one of the only ones to put up with his nonsense. He hadn’t found his soulmate yet, and while he didn’t voice his distress, Remus had suspicions that Logan was worrying about it. So, being Remus, the thing he did was try to distract his friend with dirty jokes and Vine compilations.

Logan looked up from the book he was reading and said, “Sorry, could you repeat that? I had my attention turned to my book.”

Remus bounced on his toes and repeated, “Roman found his soulmate! It’s a dude with purple hair!” Logan smiled and hummed, turning his attention back to his book, titled The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. “Logaaaaan! You’ve read that book like a million times! C’mon, meet him!”

The one reading sighed. “I could not have read this book one million times, that would take me approximately five million hours and twenty-four minutes. Subtracting 8 hours of sleep per night and approximately one hour of eating per day, and the 6 hours during which I will be doing school work, I have only been alive for-”

“Lo.”

“Hm?”

“I was exaggerating.”

“Oh, okay. Well, in any case, I am reading right now, you may bug me at a later time.” Remus gave an exaggerated sigh, then took out his homework from math class.

**_Janus-_ **

Janus was sitting in the back of the classroom, like always. It was hard to see back there, but the less people he had to talk to, the better.  _ Yeah, like anyone would want to talk to me anyways _ . 

“Janus C. Dolian?” Jay bolted his head up to see the teacher glancing around the classroom.

“I actually go by Jay,” he said to Mr. Berry, so quiet that the teacher might not have heard him. Luckily, he did. It was a sort of half-truth; he did go by Jay, but only with people he didn’t know well. 

Unluckily, someone else also heard him. Someone in the front row swiveled his head back to, presumably, see who had talked.  _ Oh. Oh, he was cute _ . The boy’s emerald green eyes glanced at him, and he shot Janus a smile. Janus flicked his eyes downward and tried to make it seem like he wasn’t thinking about the cute boy who sat in the furthest seat away from him.

Mr. Berry interrupted his thoughts. “Remus Duke?” The same guy turned his head back to the teacher.

“Here and present, Mister!” the boy- Remus- exclaimed while whipping back around to face Mr. Berry. Just from that one interaction, Janus could tell that Remus was the kind of person who would do something embarrassing just to spite someone. He probably had no filter when speaking, maybe got in fights sometimes, due to the faded bruise on his cheek. Maybe his lack of filter was the reason for that bruise.

Wait- why did Janus care so much about what Remus was like?

-

Janus was sitting alone at lunch. It wasn’t an uncommon thing, no one wanted to sit with the guy with a scar across the whole left side of his face. The closest person to him was a nerd-like boy with glasses, a black polo shirt, and a tie. He was reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; that was one of Janus’s favorites. The murderer is-

Just then, Remus came bounding over. “Lo-Lo! Guess what-- Roman found his soulmate!” He gestured over to a corner, where a taller boy was sitting with a guy with earrings and purple hair.  _ Fun hair color _ , thought Janus dryly. He used to have a friend with purple hair as well, but he moved away, and Jay never found out where; and they had kind of ended on bad terms. Janus had recently moved here as well, because his dad got offered a job here in Florida.

Remus and his friend kept talking, but Janus barely paid attention. A thought came to his mind:  _ what if it’s Virgil? _

So, I’m sure you can imagine the surprise when the purple-haired guy turned his head over. Janus had been drinking water, his eyes flicking to the pair in the corner from time to time. Janus looked at them once more, conveniently at the same time that they were turning around. 

_ Wha- Virgil?! _ Janus choked on the water he’d been drinking, gaining the attention of Remus, the nerd guy, and Virgil and his other friend. He turned around quickly and shoved his lunch in his bag, then speed-walked off to the bathroom to dry off his shirt.

**_Remus-_ **

Remus heard coughing behind him, then turned to see the cute guy from class- Jay, he remembered- running off in the other direction.  _ Is he okay? _ He turned to tell Logan he was going to check on the new kid, then Logan’s eyes lit up like he had just gotten an idea.

“What if you’re the one who has to say something unique to your soulmate?” Logan… had a point. “You could say an interesting fact that not a lot of people know to everyone you have never spoken to before, who speaks to you.”

Remus was surprised that he hadn’t thought of this before. “Great idea! Oh- I’m gonna go check on-” 

And that’s when the bell rang for the next class.

-

That night, Remus stayed up very late looking up weird facts to tell people who said ‘hey’ to him. The next day he was almost late for school because he slept past his alarm. Running to the bus stop, he was writing a bunch of the facts he had read last night on a notepad and trying to pull his jacket up, while at the same time zipping his backpack, which was slung loosely off one arm, and running with untied shoes.

In science that day, which happened to be Remus’s favorite class, the teacher paired everyone up. Remus got paired with a boy named Terrence.

“Hey!” He chirped.

_ He said hey! _ “Um- uh- Snails have 14,000 teeth!” Remus blurted.

“Huh?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows together.  _ Not him, then.. _ He just showed him his wrist. “Oh. No, mine’s different.”

“Oh, uh, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Hey, did you hear any of the instructions?”

-

It went on like this for several months. Every new person who said ‘hey’ to Remus would receive a strange fact:

“ The medical name for a butt crack is ‘intergluteal cleft’.” 

“The human nose can remember up to 50,000 scents.” 

“Bullfrogs don’t sleep.”

“Sunsets on Mars are blue.”

“The regal horned lizard squirts blood out of its eyes,” 

and the like. Remus was beginning to give up; would he ever find his soulmate?

-

On the first day of the last week of school, Remus’s science teacher assigned an end-of-the-year project, with people they hadn’t worked with.

“Remus King and Jay Dolian.” The two boys looked up from their seats and went toward each other. 

Janus was first to speak. “Hey,” he said quietly. 

Remus forgot his entire mental library of facts that he’d had, and simply said something he’d learned the other day: “Sloths grow algae on their fur as a camouflage!”

Jay’s eyes widened as Remus spoke, realizing what he’d just said. He couldn’t find any words to say at first, and simply held up his wrist. He regained his tongue a few seconds later and exclaimed, “Do you have  _ any _ idea-”

He was cut off with a sudden and tight hug from his soulmate. “It’s you!” Remus exclaimed, and dragged his soulmate off to finish the project.


End file.
